On editing

Editing is more than just pointing out and correcting glaring grammatical errors or making sure subjects and verbs agree or that infinitives aren't split. What most fail to realize is that editing involves ensuring sentences are constructed in a way that does not slow the reader down or impede on the joy of reading.

Take a sentence. It may be grammatically sound but an ardently placed comma (often with good intentions from the writer) could ruin the flow of an otherwise heartfelt statement. It takes a truly generous writer and a talented editor to give the reader the gift of free reign through flow, coherence and construction. Some sentences are decision-makers and take the fun out of reading. As a reader, you would want to decide for yourself as to how you would like to take to what you're reading. It's never a good idea to relegate your readers to the role of passive observers.

I wouldn't like that. Would you?


---
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And because I understand that writers get proprietary about their work (I do). 

The monster in your head

Seems like words up and left sometime in the wee hours when I was dreaming of weaving them into a poem I guess I will never get around to writing anymore. The writer in me is waning. And I've enough strength to even slap together bones of a piece I've been working on in my mind.

Words, words, words elusive.

Floating in my mind, flitting out of reach every time the urge to pluck them off arises. A pity but I don't dare wish for sadness or tragedy to fuel my art lest the Universe grants my fucked-up wish. Prevention is always better than cure or the more apt but hardly ever effective, damage control.

On a positive note:
We try.

Measuring yourself 

on a metaphysical scale

and finding yourself

lacking.

Realizing 

that there never were

monsters under your bed

in your head, all this time, in your head.

I am glad we are in love again.

Halfway through this week's batch of laundry and I am assaulted by the faint smell of longing --- plaids combined with the musky smell of Bulgari you favor. Yes, I long for you greatly these days, more so than I have ever longed for you in the time that we have been together.

Somewhere I read that your truths are revealed to you at times of great distress. What has been revealed to me is this: I would gladly fall into your abyss and anchor my heart onto your raging sea, be slammed against the rocks repeatedly at every turn of the tide than drift aimlessly into a world without sight, touch, and smell of you.

Perhaps this molding of my heart into the small of your palm is the desire to remain worthy of your affections despite the incessant fall of rain on this path we have carved for ourselves. Hearts somewhere find comfort in the rain, however mine remains hopeful at the prospect of (successfully) braving the eroding waters.

Here's a prayer sent to the high heavens and whispered to whoever wants to listen: Allow the rain to beat down on us mercilessly to carve for smarter roads, stronger hearts and deeper underground recesses, where we turn to for strength when life decides it isn't done with us yet.

So in this season of water we blossom.

Literary tattoos and then some

Early birthday gift from V.
An impulse I don't mind repeating.

Cacoethes Scribendi

If all the trees in all the woods were men

And each and every blade of grass a pen

If every leaf on every shrub and tree

Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea

Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes

Had nothing else to do but act as scribes

And for ten thousand ages, day and night

The human race should write, and write, and write

Till all the pens and paper were used up

And the huge inkstand was an empty cup

Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink

Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

---

Oh my good man.

Buhos

Hayaan ang buhos ng mga salita mula sa pluma

Ipinta ang daloy ng bawat letra hangga't matakpan

ang kalumaan ng kwadernong muntik nang makalimutan

Asul para sa pag-asa

Puti para sa pag-ibig

Dilaw para sa kaligayahan

Pula sa pakikibaka

Punuin ang bawat pahina.

Ibaon sa tula at pintura.

#ScrapPork

Dugo't buwis-pawis

naghalong pagod at panalangin

isa, dalawa, tatlo

Diyos lang ang makapagsabi kung magkano.

Tama bang agrabyado

na naman tayong mga Pilipino?

Halos silaban ang sariling paa

sa pagtatrabaho, para ano?

Para kanino?

Sino nga ba ang hari ng mga Pilipino?

Tayo, mismo, dapat tayo

hindi ang mga baboy ng gobyerno.

Walang dayuha't baboy ang gagapi.

Tayo ang huling may sabi:

Tayo ang hari,

wala na sa'ting aapi.

In memoriam

Death

offers no peace

for the living.

Sentiments profusely offered

well-meaning to soften the blow

fall on deaf ears 

plugged with the question ---

Have we done 

everything we can?

A hand plunged into an empty room,

save for careworn books

and a bottle of calming oil,

fails to answer ---

What is the average amount

of time needed to accept 

the loss of someone

dearly loved?

All the unnecessary steps

we take to convince ourselves

enough is enough

flitter uselessly in the sea of people

bearing one face ---

that of who we lost.

---

Because I see her everywhere.

Utterance

People

Places

Circumstances

Photographs of almost faded memories

the seeking, the chance meetings

of returnings and leavings

seen

unseen

desperate almost glimpses

A symphony

Silhouettes of broken soliloquies.

---

29 March 2012

Crux.

Vanishing acts

Saying goodbye.
Letting go.

Things I am actually not very good at despite the cool fabric of detachment I drape around my body everyday.

The moment we found out about Lola Kit's illness, we were worried of course, but more than anything, optimistic. My Grandmother was one of the most resilient people I know and for as long as I have known her, the strongest. Surely she'd overcome a measly little illness. Surely she'd persevere and have nothing to show for save for a few more laugh lines, loving additions to her already beautifully lined face.

But End Stage Renal Failure is a killer.
The most cunning of all thieves.
And it took Lola Kit away from us.

From me.

I haven't really said goodbye. I couldn't bear doing so, seeing her frail, ill and still fighting. My heart ached for her and for a time before her death, I could actually feel a heaviness inside from the weight of it. I still do.

So I don't think I will, not anytime soon. Perhaps someday my Grandmother's passing and her memory will heal inside me. Gradually, I will come to believe that she found the assurance of God's presence when she left. I will someday, through faith, through choice.

Can't say I'm looking forward to it. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad she was freed of her suffering. She fought the good fight but it hurts to know the finality of her absence.

There will be no more talks of the supernatural until the wee hours of the morning.
There will be no more cutting across the dry Barok river bed to get to San Miguel and eventually Roxas proper where an afternoon will be spent foraging in her favorite ukay-ukay stop.
There will be no more spontaneous Holy Week visits to Barok. Or surprise visits to Iloilo.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I miss you a lot, Lola Kit.

Just this once

It's hard not to feel persecuted by fate. It seems that every time her turn came up, something happens to snatch it away.


---
Proverbial chip on the shoulder. And she's not entirely a bad person. Or so she thinks. And why is she talking in the third person?

Pants on fire

Find yourself caught in the morning unfolding,
a witness to the south's leaden panorama
-- derricks, clouds, traffic -- slowly sweeping into view.
Find yourself sharing a smoke with a single disappointing friend
at a time caught in what a tangled web we weave.
Find yourself extending gifts in the form of the benefit of the doubt,
convinced of the innate goodness of people
and all the paltry things we use to paint over
the often inexcusable human desire to lie,
how you want this one to be true
despite all the warning bells,
sirens singing the same song.

Find yourself finding out for certain
how There's nothing going on is really, truly, undeniably something.

Find yourself swearing to keep a safe distance
when you can barely prevent invisible strings
tugging you this way and that, here and there.
Find yourself starting to lose faith,
wanting, no, praying, that shit won't hit the fan if it hasn't already,
knowing how everything has a price and has a way of unraveling, revealing.

Find yourself finally settling for refusals,
vehement as though everything were set in stone,
plugging your ears with music that says
Don't tell me I told you so and Good luck, good luck, good luck.



---
Interesting conversation.

Fuel to the fire

Iced Caramel Latte for Tata!

Thank you.

The dearly consumed designer coffee procured at a price much more extravagant for her absence of income borders between categories of folly versus fancy versus But I need something to make me feel better and What won't you give to feel better over the lack of writing? As if saying such a thing would bring the mojo back, would make her actually want to sit down and write.

Perhaps she shouldn't be so worried about the writing and seemingly lack of desire to create, i.e., unfinished painting in the dining area arranged so that she could pick up where she left of. Perhaps because it means she is much happier elsewhere yet finds herself pining for sadness to fuel her art.

And asks the question ---

What to do should you find the universe conspiring to grant your fucked-up wish?

---

Semi-shitty past couple of months in the writing world (mine, that is.) 

Hey, Jealousy!

The heart lives in the deadliest of houses --- its feelings.
An organ of fancy, it believes too much and forgets too little.

In a city south of the metro, a writer wields her pen in a flurry of gossamer wings.
She looks for words to hide behind, as though scrambling for clothes.
But she fails to find the right ones. So she buys a ticket to dreamland ---

"What keeps us alive within these walls of blood and bone is the promise of sleep. Ergo, the momentary forgetting of words than wound."

 --- and promptly misses the flight.

Resigned, she picks up her pen
and disappears into the grain and grind
against words elusive.

After fighting off the urge
to hurl her phone at the face
of her slumbering lover.


---
Gin Blossoms.

Currencies of feeling

The moon seemed to be in their favor that night. And the wind, delighted at the thought, carried cherry blossoms to sprinkle the uneven pavement as she made her way to where she stood, hands raised to mark her spot as if she would miss her. Dewy skin, comfortable shoes, jeans and a shirt available only in a shop situated halfway around the world --- she stood there waiting for her and she knew that the moment she took a step forward, her world would crumble.

Oh, please. Don't say anything.

And she didn't. Exempt from sound. Instead, when she was quite near, she reached for her cheek and as she closed her eyes to savor the contact, she heard a voice: 

"You do not have enough balance to continue this dream. Please reload immediately to avoid disconnection."

Awash

The words we refused to utter.
The questions left unanswered.
The laughter unheard.
The smiles unseen.
The kiss that ignited.
The touch that set aflame.
We carry them in boxes
small and quaint,
beautifully decorated
to conceal, to mislead
the darkness they contain.
What of these, you ask.
Nothing, I whisper.
And that is how things are with us.

---
Reposting from Hushed Hysterics, my other writing repository. Online carbon imprint has increased exponentially. Oh my.

A tiny break

Into my breathing latching
as I catch a glimpse of you
and with you
what could have been what
we would have been
had we not
walked away.

---
Nothing sort of masturbatory. What I doodled after hearing Imago's haunting lyrics:

“Permiso sa isang araw na makasama ka. Abiso ng pusong bulag na humahanga. Tama bang aminin na nating may taning tong pag-ibig natin, dakila man walang kasaysayang kakapit sa bulag na pag-ibig.”

What?

Since you know what you're doing (and don't you dare second-guess yourself because when it comes to you, you are quite right and no one knows you better than you do), yours is not a question of what they think and making a passable life out of what you have working for you.

It's a question of setting your own standards and soaring way above them.

Fuck. It. All.

Everybody wants to be a writer, or claims to be one.
Hell, you can get your syntax straight or regurgitate grammatically sound prose but very few people can bleed magic on the page.

Mag-iisang taon...

Ilang segundo, minuto
ang kinailangan mo
upang ibaon ng tuluyan
ang sakit na dulot ng kahapon?

Isang hakbang palayo ---
dagdag sa lumalaking agwat
sa inyong pagitan
para sa ikabubuti ng lahat, ka'mo.

Ngunit nagniningning,
naglalakbay sa iyong mukha
ang mga patak ng pangungulila
na patuloy mong iniluluha.

Ako ang saksi.
Kasama ang nangangalawang
na poste ng kuryente
at ang basang mukha ng kalsada

Sige, sabi ko.
Hindi ko man alam ang dahilan
alay ko ang palad ng pagkakaibigan.
Inom ka pa, eto, ako na bahala sa deposito.

Reading rampage

Been on a reading rampage the past several weeks. Just finished ---

I am the Messenger (Zusak)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera)
Divergent (Roth)
Insurgent (Roth)
The Perks of being a Wallflower (Chbosky)
The Power of Six

Currently reading Screwtape Proposes a Toast and other pieces by C.S. Lewis. Many a silent chuckle I have let loose during shuttle rides to and fro work. My old, ratty copy seems shiny and new, and the bookworm in me is enormously glad I packed it along with several favorites coming here from Iloilo some seven years ago.

Birthday's coming up and while I'm looking forward to V's advanced birthday gift (Baguio, baby!), I wouldn't mind receiving some if not most of what's listed here. Oh, shameless, I know!

The Constant Heart (Nova)
The Man Without a Country (Vonnegut)
Breathing the Water (Levertov)
No One Belongs Here More Than You (July)
Daughters of the North/The Carhullan Army (Hall)
Gone Girl (Flynn)
The Edible Woman (Atwood)

I've a thing for the smell of books. Almost a turn-on, yeah. Also, love highlighting some of my favorite passages. Thus, a real, live book is a must. Hear! Hear!

Ending note/life lately:

Will jump into the unknown in a month's time. Wondering what awaits me. Hell, not sure of anything except this one thing --- it's been real but I'd like my life back, thank you.

Fingers crossed and knocking on all pieces of wood I can, this is going to be the best birthday gift I'm going to give myself.

Forgiven not forgotten

We have always
sought the December wind.

Perhaps because it reminds us
of warmth despite the cold

the radiance of
hearts so light

the temporary rising
of pristine flags

surrendering to the moment,
joyous and unrestrained

hostilties forgotten,
all's forgiven for the time being.

Comings and goings

Going, going, gone. Yep, that'll be me. And I can't wait.

Long time coming. Enough false loyalty. Enough with the hope that staying will amount to something. Just enough. Stop. Give way to something new. Allow the passing to usher the emergence. Of what --- is to be decided. And deciding to look at the indecision in a positive light. Being anything within the confines of my adulthood. And deciding what a happy confinement it shall be.

For now, we suck it up.

Happy New Year, folks.
Decide what you will become.
Plunge head on and make no regrets.
More importantly, dare to live free.


---
And if my face is any indication of how stressed I am where the big change is concerned, it's high time to pack me bags, lassie.